Model Neighbor

ZAHID SARDAR, Architecture & design editor of the Examiner Magazine

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, July 21, 1996

1996-07-21 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Over a dozen years ago, when San Francisco architect Jerry Veverka bought a southwest-facing view lot on Elsie Street in Bernal Heights, he knew it was a gamble.

The neighborhood's reputation as one of fierce watchdogs guarding the quaint, homey character of this corner of the Mission is formidable. Bernal Heights is the first area in The City with de facto power to review approved building permits. In the '70s, a builder who acquired 10 lots on Elsie Street, opposite Veverka's property, couldn't develop any of them; the neighborhood got the mayor to pull his permits.

"The device they used to get a moratorium was the narrowness of the street - only 16 feet wide - and its steepness, which made it impossible for fire trucks to pass," says Veverka.

"The money for the widening of the street had been set aside with the Department of Public Works. All we had to do was to make it go," he says. Veverka and his wife, Claudia, rallied other lot owners on Elsie Street, and petitioned then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein until the street was eventually widened in 1985. The design guidelines set by the Northwest Bernal Block Club and those contained within the Elsie Street Plan were other hurdles. They were put together by vigilant neighbors during the late '70s. "Their ideas were basically from a pattern language...design theorist Christopher Alexander's abstract theories," Veverka says. "It was all very prescriptive." Flat roofs were allowed only if they were usable. At least one side yard was mandated, and houses were required to be stepped-down in the back. "Basically, the design stuff was aimed to make new houses look old," Veverka says.

"Take the best of all these old buildings, and you end up repeating the same overwhelmingly cute buildings," he protests. Still, the architect stuck close to the design review specifications while trying to satisfy his own vision of living in an industrial Soho-style loft.

Plans for the house were displayed for more than 30 neighbors and the review board at the steep, 25-by-70-foot site, previously terraced for earthquake shacks and makeshift foundations. Although Veverka was forced to give up the idea of corrugated siding (impractical anyway, since it can rust within 20 years or so), his plans passed muster.

A model and drawings displayed at the site were used to convince naysayers why the house should not step down at the back as required by the Elsie Street Plan.

"I colored the contour of the lot and used ugly shades of gray for a bad design and cute and cuddly colors for the one we wanted, and the choice became clear," Veverka laughs. The simple, symmetrical faÊade of the four-level white-painted clapboard structure Veverka designed, is like a rural one-room school house with a sloping roof. A large square window which takes in the view, and an asymmetrical entry loggia add distinction and visual interest, hinting at the open-plan interior, where a triangular loft bedroom floats over a compact high-tech kitchen, a dining room and a sunken living area. Cork tiles cover the floors and a spiral staircase leads to the bedroom. Although the house is not large - just 1,800 square feet - Veverka has also managed to fit in two bedrooms and an extra bathroom at the entry level. Veverka tried to vary the aesthetics within the boundaries set by the guidelines, but not just for visual emphasis. Most of the other houses have entry doors at the third level. "I put ours one level closer to the ground ( just above the garage)," Veverka points out. "Even though we don't really use the entry deck, it visually connects us to the street." When people come and go from his house, there are signs of life visible from below. The strict design regulations proved to be fortuitous for the architect. "The requirement for side yards really helped me a lot. It enabled me to put windows on the side. I saw that was something I could use to my advantage," Veverka says. Even though a building now blocks his best views, the southwest windows still flood the interior with light, eliminating any need for skylights. One window, left deliberately taller, gives them a view from the bedroom loft over the neighbor's roof, which Veverka knew could go no higher than permitted by the guidelines. The side yards give easy access to the back garden, whose terraced levels are like palimpsests of old foundations.

"We took over 20 or 30 loads of dirt to it. Without that, we would have been going through the house," Veverka says. The guidelines allowed the architect to visualize precisely the built environment that was to come. "I could see this house being here. I imagined the houses across the street," Veverka remembers. If he was going to block some views, he knew in turn other houses would block his sunlight. Even though Veverka's design bent a few of the rules, everyone agreed that it was what it was supposed to be: It kept other buildings that were built later from feeling like marauders or intruders. "On the whole my house was a good neighbor," Veverka says. "And it still is." &lt;